The Reading Book Post, March 16th

Another week has begun, but let's take a moment and see what happened in the literary world the previous days. 

• This is the time of the season when a lot of prizes annonce their longlists, and some even their shortlists. As we have seen, in the previous weeks the Romantic Novelist's Association announced the shortlists for the six categories and this week other organizations announced their lists. First, the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction announced the longlist, consisting 20 novels. The judges will have to choose 6 of those and the final winner will be announced on 3rd June 2015. Moreover, the Wellcome Book Prize made this video announcement of the shortlist and the winner will be revealed on 29th April 2015. The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize longlist was announced this week and the shortlist is due next month. Finally, George R. R. Martin nominated Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel for the Hugo Awards, a book well received by the science fiction community.

• Umberto Eco, the italian author of The Name of the Rose, will be releasing a new satirical novel on 3rd November 2015, named Numero Zero. The book is already published in Italy and is well-received, while its foreign rights are already sold to 34 countries.

• Are there any Mr. Darcy fans? I have some disturbing news for you (well, myself included). Author Joanna Trollope has argued that the much admired gentleman of the romantic literature has probably made his 10,000 pounds per year from exploitation, slavery included. Shocking right?

• The new Star Wars novel, Lords of the Sith, will include a lesbian character. The author of the novel Paul. S. Kemp has comfirmed that there will be indeed such a character. Lord of the Sith will be available on 28th April. Another book already added to my TBR list. 

• Kazuo Ishiguro has written lyrics for the jazz singer Stacey Kent. I wasn't aware of the fact and this interesting interview revealed other sides of the well known author, such as his experience as a lyricist and his family. 

• This week it was a really sad one. The much beloved author Sir Terry Pratchett died at the age of 66. The whole literary world is shaken by the news and a lot of novelists payed tribute to him sharing their memories and how his work affected theirs. Neil Gaiman, which was a friend of Terry Pratchett the last 30 years, talked about him and remembered him at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco Thursday night.

• To change the mood, I will end this post with this gallery of Premier League's footballers holding their favourite books. It's so interesting to see the different tastes of each one of them.